Tom Ricks: Fox News 'is making it up'

11/27/12 10:17 AM EST

Author Tom Ricks on Tuesday said Fox News is “making it up” that he apologized after slamming the network during an on-air interview as “operating as a wing of the Republican Party” and hyping Benghazi for political reasons.

Ricks told POLITICO that Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice president of news, made the claim he apologized privately because “when the facts aren’t on their side, they attack the person.”

“Clemente is making it up, and it is sloppy of Hollywood Reporter to not ask him for specifics — what exactly am I alleged to have said? — and also to seek a response from me,” Ricks wrote in an e-mail. “Why are they doing this? Because their MO is that when the facts aren’t on their side, they attack the person.”

“When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor’s question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself -- and his book," Clemente told THR in an e-mail. "He apologized in our offices afterward but doesn’t have the strength of character to do that publicly."

Ricks added that the first person he spoke with after going off-air was Fox News’s Bret Baier. Baier has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Asked about the discrepancy, Clemente referred POLITICO to Fox News communications representative Dana Klinghoffer, who has yet to respond. Neither Clemente or Klinghoffer responded when asked to comment on the charge that Clemente lied about Ricks' apology.

Update (4:40 p.m.):

Ricks sends along the note he wrote Tuesday afternoon to Clemente:

Mr. Clemente,

To clarify my comments for you: I did not apologize.

As it happened, I ran into Bret Baier as I emerged from the interview. We know each other from working at the Pentagon. He asked if I was serious in saying that Fox had hyped Bengahzi, and I said I was. We discussed that. It was a cordial exchange. (I wouldn’t mention this private conversation except that you apparently are quoting my hallway conversations as part of your attack.)

Later, as I was leaving, the booker or producer (I am not sure what her title was) said she thought I had been rude. I said I might have been a bit snappish because I am tired of book tour. This was in no way an apology but rather an explanation of why I jumped a bit when the anchor began the segment with the assertion that pressure on the White House was building—which it most clearly was not.